


Casus Fortuitous

by TKodami



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel Possessing Dean Winchester, Coda, Episode: s10e03 Soul Survivor, Episode: s10e06 Ask Jeeves, M/M, Mark of Cain, PTSD flashbacks, Season/Series 10, Starts out canon compliant, Temporary Character Death, ends up somewhere altogether different, mild body horror, the winchesters come back more than jesus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-09
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-17 02:24:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3511739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TKodami/pseuds/TKodami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's not dealing, Dean's not cured, Castiel isn't fooling anyone (except maybe himself). A slightly different telling of the S10 Mark of Cain storyline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam, Dean, and Cas deal with the fallout of the demon cure in "Soul Survivor". 
> 
> Follows the events of 10.03 & 10.06, then goes AU from there. This story was inspired by a prompt on spn-masquerade which asked for Castiel helping Dean cure the Mark of Cain, then smut & sexy times; instead, I wrote a whole bunch of plot. The rating will go up in later chapters. You have been warned!
> 
> Chapter has now been beta'd!

"Sammy you know I hate shots," Dean said. A moment later, his face contorted and the demon screamed at him through his brother's face.

This was just a job, Sam thought. Any old demon job. You got this. 

Trembling, he felt the needle mutinously slip _ever-so-slightly_ in his hand. 

The last little slice of Sam's family was strapped to a chair inside a devil's trap, in a cozy little corner of the bunker’s dungeon. If Sam couldn't control himself now, he'd have nothing but these goddamn walls, the last goddamn legacy of the Men of Letters to live within them. He had to do this, because there was no contemplating the alternative. Sam pushed his fear into a tiny ball and swallowed it. Swallowed it so far down, it reached the Winchester memory box marked "Shit To Deal With Later" and just kept falling.

Sam clenched his jaw, and stabbed the needle deep into the meat of his brother's arm. This cure would work, or it would kill them both.

* * *

The blessed blood/demon cure went about as well as Sam expected: the door to the electrical generator was smashed in; a hammer was embedded in the wall where Dean had swung for his head and missed; and the lines of his concentration frayed beyond his ability to keep his fear from his face. He knew, because he could see the exact same expression on Cas--and that was definitely a new one for the angel.

For all Sam went on about the lore, and for as much as he trusted it, the cure was an unknown quantity. One documented use on 8mm film, and one almost-cured king of hell weren’t exactly a stellar track-record for a ritual. In the sepulchral quiet of the library, he’d read over the cure’s documentation and had done some back-of-the-envelop calculations. Based on the mystical properties of salt, it was included in the cure so that it could connect with the demon’s true form. But Dean himself was the demon; he wasn’t smoke & sulfur in a possessed body. Sam had read over the notes, and re-read them. With a few big _what if this fucks it up?_ reservations, he had finally decided to toss the palmful of salt to the mouth, in favor of a blessing of return and the laying of hands used in ancient Briton rites for the return of the heroic dead.

Sam muttered the blessing as Cas _laid on hands_ to drag his brother back to the dungeon. Dean had gone rigid in the angel’s arms--fierce but unresisting. 

Moment of truth. Strapped back in to the chair, in the devil’s trap, Sam advanced and stuck the needle into Dean’s arm. He hit the artery, depressed the plunger, then pulled back. He felt like flinging the needle across the room. No. He couldn’t. He had to keep it together for just a few minutes more. Sam slipped it back into its case and withdrew from the circle.

Sam and Cas stood shoulder to shoulder. Sam moved back into a protective stance, and Cas mirrored his posture--protecting themselves, or maybe someone who wasn’t even in the room. 

Dean roused back into consciousness. He shook his head once, twice, and squinched his eyes. His face relaxed.

A feeling of unease passed through Sam like a chill.

That was when Dean opened his eyes. Ink-black. Sam took in a breath. _No. It didn't--I should have kept the--_ Wait. 

Something was happening. Like a wave passing over a lake, the black film rippled across Dean’s cornea... and disappeared with a quiet and semi-magical _chck-hiss_.

Dean was cured.

* * *

A half-hour later, Cas intercepted him as he made a beeline to the garage. The angel lingered on the cusp of the library’s doorway--nervous, or determined, or some mixture of both. Sam was too goddamn tired to parse it out.

He grunted out a greeting. Because it was easier than dealing with the wave of emotion he’d seen on Cas’ face as Sam unstrapped Dean from the chair (Cas had in the previous breath just denied an angel’s ability to feel joy, and that was a Winchester-sized repression if he’d ever heard it). Sam knew the angel had a complicated set of feelings for his brother, and there was no way for him to crack the surface of that emotional stuff. Not when Sam was busy ignoring the emotional shit he’d stuffed into his own box. This was by no means late enough to be later.

Treat it like a case, Sam thought, and Cas like a concerned family member. 

So he put on a little show of confidence for Cas as he delivered the latest status report. 

Cure worked. Keep positive. Hope for the best. Dean's hungry. He played up the hunger part as much as he could. Demons didn't eat, and neither did angels; most supernatural beasties were far more into flesh, or blood, or other non-burger related objects to make a craving for fast-food seem positively like the paragon of humanity.

The retreat back into his professional persona was a relief. Sam didn't want to think about all of the ways in which Dean still wasn't--quite--fitting. He knew that he was handling Cas, maybe even lying to him, and to some extent, that even with the both of them bone-weary, it was the wrong thing to do. 

Cas's response knocked him right out of his train of thought.

"Sooner or later, the mark is going to be an issue," Cas said, voice inflected with just enough righteous urgency to remind Sam how futile it was to handle _Castiel, Angel of the Lord_. 

Already Cas had leapt to the next battlefield, and saw the next enemy position that need to be breached. This was a mind that strategized wars for Heaven; Sam suspected that despite their extreme lack of lore on the mark, Cas knew better than anyone its significance--even if they didn't know what it did, exactly.

Castiel caught and held Sam's gaze, to impress the point. "You have to be prepared." 

"One battle at a time," Sam said, and trudged through the library, digging for the car keys in his pocket. Before he reached the other doorway, he turned back to watch Cas. The angel stared at him across the library, as though willing him to see the whole of the board from his very limited, very exhausted view. Cas’ mistake, Sam thought tiredly, is that Winchesters only ever saw the board as a pawn. 

Despite the waves of emotional intensity that were radiating off of Cas, in the deathly quiet of the Men of Letters’ library, Cas was swallowed up in shadows.

Sam relented. He had to give Cas _something_. In a low voice, so it wouldn't carry down the hallways: "and we will be. Prepared, I mean. I won't drop my guard again."

And then a minute later, he remembered just how lost Cas had sounded on the phone, coughing like a smoker and desperately lonely. That had been just weeks ago. Before Sam had picked up the first real lead on Dean. He added, "I promise you, we'll fix this. We'll fix--him. Together. Okay?"

Cas nodded, as though he’d finally heard the right thing. "Okay."

* * *

Dean was more or less cured.

Cas had lit out of the bunker after Sam had returned home (and he’d heard Dean half-heartedly shuffling books, papers, mementos around his room for the rest of the evening). Sam was disappointed on his brother’s behalf; with Heaven and Hell quiet, he’d actually thought Cas might stay. 

They ran cases while they waited for something to happen. Dean checked his cell phone, and double-checked it. Sometimes he played with it between witnesses, running his finger over the edge. Sometimes he ran his finger over the Mark instead. 

Weeks later, Sam thought back to conversation he had with Cas in the bunker. The next front, the next battle, was the Mark. No doubt about it.

Weeks later, Sam watched his brother put five bullets in the chest of a shifter, then with a sickening pause, he’d grabbed a knife out of the butcher block and plunged it into her chest again, and again, and again. 

Dean was more or less cured, with an emphasis on the less.

Good thing they had prepared.

* * *

The mission was his top priority, but even re-graced, Castiel found himself nodding off to sleep after a long night on the road. Conscientiously, he had rejected Hannah’s offers to drive (she wasn’t licensed; even if she grasped the theory of driving, Castiel was not going to trust theory to get the Lincoln safely off the interstate). When they pulled off at a little bump-in-the-road town, Hannah played spotter. They grabbed a room at the first motel she spotted that didn’t charge by the hour.

Motel rooms were like a home-away-from-home. Castiel opened the door, and expected a sense of familiarity to wash over him. 

Traveling with the Winchesters had skewed Castiel’s sense of decor. He expected dank, grungy rooms, permeated with a faded sense of the past (which he now knew was an interior decoration hangover from the seventies). This motel was serviceable and clean: white stucco ceiling, flat paint on the walls, not a single strand of fake beads in sight.

Castiel found himself sitting on the motel bed’s throw with his hands clasped loosely between his knees. Hannah delivered a verbal report on the dissenting angels in the area (three angels, one had already returned to heaven, the other two had gone to ground). The air conditioner two doors down the hall rattled once, twice, and then died. Somewhere in the long hot hallway in a humid Oklahoma night, a soft sniffling (crying), and the low hum of Magic Fingers. 

The sounds created this hypnotic pull; now that he could hear everything, the sounds of life around him became like the sound of the sea rolling gently across him. It soothed him, and as he relaxed bit by bit, his mind wandered. 

Truth be told, Castiel found himself unsure on several points from the last few weeks on the road with Hannah. Somewhere below his working mind, Castiel felt a spreading tingle that nudged against his thoughts. 

Oncoming loss of consciousness, he thought, and dismissed it from his attention.

Nothing was quite as pressing as discovering what _mission_ actually meant.

Language had context and ritual, and he was now learning what words meant, exactly. His pop-culture update patch last year had been helpful, but it left out some very important details that Castiel was only now piecing together as he attempted to convey these nuances to Hannah. 

_Fine_ was a ritual. An expected answer to an expected question. It meant “I have a long response, but I don’t want to talk about it. I know you don’t want to talk about it either. Let us share this mutual quiet and linger in each others' company.” 

_You’re looking good_ meant “I’m glad you are not dead.” 

_You look terrible_ meant “I’m glad you’re not dead.” 

(Funny how two different things could mean the same thing.) 

The context for the last two were more obscure to Castiel. Did they mean, “so please stay?” or “you should probably go.” He hadn’t stayed to ask. He hadn’t stayed. At the back of his mind, the tingling slowly began to amp up. 

Still he ignored it; Castiel was on to something. It stood to reason that mission meant something immense. It had meant “putting Heaven in order” when Dean was in the wind, and it meant “saving Dean” when Sam called them half-a-country away. Mission meant obeying Heaven to Hannah, and saving the world to the Winchesters. He knew the mission meant everything to him--or else why would he have said it to Hannah at the gas station as they barrelled towards Lebanon, Kansas? 

The tingling broke through into Castiel’s conscious mind, and he recognized the growing power for what it was: Sam’s go-signal. Something had gone very wrong.

The force cycled up in strength. Time was, he could have spread his wings and found himself in an instant at the source of the call. Instead, he had to wait for the final incantation of a two part summon-teleport spell used to recall a wounded, flightless soldier to his commander. The angelic Call. 

“Castiel? CASTIEL?!” Through a muzzy veil, Castiel realized that Hannah was shaking him. No, he was shaking. The whole bed was vibrating. The entire room. No, it was just him, for him the entire world was shaking off its hinges. He was being restrained, held back from the inexorable call. Hannah had clamped down on his shoulders, tethering him in place.

“Hannah, release me,” he said, as his voice became thin under the pressure of restraining a Call. 

“What is it, Castiel?! A Call? Someone on earth can Call? Who? WHO?! CASTIEL!”

"Someone who doesn't need to ask."

Castiel jerked his head towards her hands, his eyes pleading. He had only been her commander for a few weeks--he couldn’t order her to let him go--but she still knew when to defer to his request. Hannah squeezed his shoulder tightly, reluctantly dropped her arms. 

A moment later, a silvery flash ripped through the ether like a bat out of hell. Castiel was pulled in. The Call narrowed the ether into a tunnel and he pulled himself through it. It was like threading a needle with his vessel, trueform in tow. On the other side, he crashed back into the earthly realm. Castiel found himself in a completely different world. 

More accurately: he found himself three-hundred and fifty miles away, in a mansion-home owned by a deceased couple, Sam Winchester standing over a small copper brazier of herbs and incanted spices. On the floor, concentric circles had been splashed with blood (in a trail that led back to a dead woman--no, a recently killed shifter). And on the floor in front of him, pressed against the linoleum tile, was the face of a man contorted in agony. 

“The _mission_ ,” he breathed.

* * *

“Sam, Sam, I need you to grab his other arm. We need to get him to the Impala,” Castiel called out, reaching towards Dean to help him to his feet when--

\--a man (presumably of the house) walked into the scene with a, “hey Winchesters, my family was wondering when we could have our kitchen back--”

\--Dean flinched like he’d been hit when Castiel contacted his arm--

\--Sam dropped the brazier and lunged forward--

\--the man said, “Oh, did you drop something? What is this, a coin?” and stooped to grab something behind the kitchen island that Castiel could not see-- 

Sam impacted with the young man at the same time he lifted the coin, and Dean’s face immediately cleared. The two men went tumbling into the side of the island. An easy smile slid onto Dean’s face. And suddenly, faster than Castiel could perceive (and his engraced senses were tuned to such a level he could watch sub-particles disintegrate in slow-motion), Dean was gone.

Something was _incredibly_ wrong. 

“Dean?” Castiel asked softly. 

“Right here, peaches,” Dean cooed softly from his ear.

He felt metal hover against his neck, not quite touching his skin. Castiel tipped his neck forward into the blade, to let his skin taste it. It gently bit into the flesh of his vessel. A butcher’s knife, stamped from carbon steel. Not a weapon capable of cutting into his grace. Not an immediate threat.

He flicked his eyes over to Sam and the young man, whose tangled legs were sticking out from behind the island. Neither was moving yet; Castiel calculated the trajectory of the fall. Not enough force to knock either unconscious; more likely, Sam was restraining them both, waiting for the moment he could act. The situation was not dangerous, not yet. 

Castiel heard rather than saw the sneer curl on Dean’s face.

“It’s just you and me, peaches. If you don’t want to dance, I’m sure Sammy here wouldn’t mind a spin when he comes to.”

Scratch that, it was _too dangerous_.

Castiel licked his lips nervously. “Was that, ah, a binding coin?” 

“You make me all tingly when you know things like that.” 

He reached for his angel blade--and then stopped the slow flick of his wrist. Castiel felt cold fear squeeze his heart. 

He was Called. 

Calling was a summoning of last resort, used for the return of maimed soldiers whose wings were too damaged for flight. The ritual required blood not of God, a bond of loyalty, and a prayer of true faith over a brazier purified with herbs of paradise. The Calling summoned the angel, but it _compelled_ the angel blade to tunnel through the ether. The blade bridged the ether, granting safe passage through the unpredictable currents between realms. This was found to be an acceptable solution for flightless angels; dying soldiers didn’t need their weapons, after all. More often than not, once Called, they were sent to the _ret zien_ like Ephraim and recorded in the lists of the dead.

His blade had been sacrificed; nothing would come.

Castiel needed a distraction. He needed it _now_. 

The memory of the silver coin in the young man's hands flashed in his mind, and replayed it slowly, slowly, slowly enough to see the face details, the small Sumerian cuneiform raised along its surface, the history of the coin etched into its surface, the velocity, the spin, the projected path of motion on its bounce. 

Suddenly the translation of the coin face came together in his mind, and his eyes widened. His lips parted and he gasped out a breathy “oh.” 

Dean’s breathing hitched behind him. 

“Was the coin _binding_ you?” Castiel asked, forcing nonchalance into his voice.

“Yeah, in fact, it was.” 

Dean dropped the knife, and his arms slackened for a moment. 

Castiel pressed the advantage. He spun around to strike, but Dean immediately grabbed Castiel up in a reversal of the angelic bearhug he’d used to restrain Dean in the bunker--now they were face to face. The Mark of Cain held strong, stronger than he’d imagined; Castiel struggled, but Dean’s strength rivaled his own. Dean crushed him against his chest. “There a problem with that, angel? You have some kind of _objection_ to binding, angel?”

There was little of Dean in the taunting words. 

“No objection.” Castiel hissed. He didn’t need to breathe, it was true, but he’d become accustomed to it as a human. “Just an--observation.” Castiel sucked in a deep breath and puffed out his back as much as he could in human form. “Can you read Sumerian?”

“Let’s say I’m a little rusty on Sumerian.” Dean’s voice was low and in his ear. The mocking tone had taken on a husky sound, the vowels slipping over Dean’s tongue. Castiel’s mind deliberately avoided what that could mean. “Let’s say, I know you’re stalling. But let’s also say, I’m enjoying it. I’m enjoying _this_. Are you, angel?”

“Those coins…” Castiel said slowly, holding on to the full meaning for just a minute more, “can only bind God’s Hands.”

“So more of this ‘servants of God,’ ‘Righteous Man’ bullshit?” Dean retorted. He ran his eye up and down Castiel’s face, and tilted his head in a parody of Castiel. “Trust me, angel, I’m far, far from Heaven these days.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Castiel saw a set of legs disappear behind the island. Dean wasn’t paying attention; he was locked into this... _whatever_ with Castiel. He switched his strategy to a new imperative: hold Dean’s attention; buy time for Sam.

Castiel laughed, a breathy, grating thing with too little air and too much genuine amusement to be entirely fake.

“You’re thinking about this all wrong,” Castiel said. 

“Oh no, I think I’ve got the right idea here.” One of Dean’s hands twitched on Castiel’s back, and balled into a fist. This time it was Castiel’s breathing that hitched. He needed focus. He forced his breath to even out as Dean loosened his grasp, but not enough to shake off the iron grip of the Mark.

“The context,” Castiel said, “that’s what you’re missing. The context...makes everything mean something.” 

“Look who’s Mister I Understand Human Things Better Than Humans. Big man,” Dean’s face took on a rougher, more familiar edge of violence. “What say we do this. I let you go, and we see how you stand up against a Knight of Hell?”

Castiel could feel his head spin in a decidedly un-angelic way. The heady mix of violence and proximity to Winchester added another dimension to whatever _this_ was. Castiel pulled his lip in and felt the slip of skin-on-skin as he worried it with his teeth, and let it go. Dean’s breathing hitched again. So he wasn’t wrong. It was entirely too intimate, too fast, and Castiel needed another tactic before he lost the thread of his strategy. Castiel was completely aware that failure, retreat, submission were not welcome options, but all offered different value to his next play.

“Sumerian,” he said, aware of how his body lit up, tense, ready for his next move, “is an extremely literal language.” 

Dean narrowed his eyes to slits. For all of his restless disregard for research, Dean wasn’t stupid. “It binds those who _held God, literally_ , is what you’re saying.” 

Castiel heard it then: a whispered chant from behind the island. Sam!

_Those in God’s Arms,_

Both sets of feet were gone now. 

_Those of God’s Hands,  
Stand Against the Earth. _

He watched Dean’s face and saw the moment he heard the lines of Sumerian incantation. Dean didn’t understand, but nevertheless recognized what they meant: he had been out-maneuvered. 

_Glory, glory, the Messenger. Greet them._

Now, this was his chance. Castiel pulled his shoulder blades in and flattened body as close to Dean as he could. The aggressive body contact startled Dean for a moment, and a quizzical Winchester expression crossed his face, a _Hey, Cas, buddy, what are you doing in New Canaan?_ That moment of inattention was enough. He slipped down Dean’s body. The tight bearhug crushed in around Dean’s chest. Castiel rolled to his feet, and flipped up the discarded kitchen knife into his hand. 

Sam appeared over the island, and threw the coin to Castiel. He grabbed the coin out of the air, and slammed it against the ground.

Like a puppet whose strings were cut, Dean tipped sideways and slammed into the ground. Castiel brought his face level with Dean.

“God? _God_? I touched, held, or whatever-- _when_?!” he demanded.

“Context, Dean.”

Dean blinked bleary glass-green eyes up at Castiel, the anger still raging in him, agony ripping through his body as he tried to fight his way up from the ground. The Mark glowed, a fierce fiery orange energy pumping into his veins. Castiel searched those eyes, willed them to flash black. But this wasn’t a demon thing. Not entirely. Dean had become--was in the process of becoming--something entirely new. The binding held, even as Dean arched off the ground, snarling. 

Sam hauled the young man of the house to his feet, and manhandled him out of the kitchen.

The distance between them felt… wrong, somehow. Castiel allowed himself this. He closed to within an inch of Dean’s face. Dean’s breath was warm, and had no hint of sulfur or the pit. It was more like orange blossoms interpreted through a garlic deep-fried pizza. 

“You were God’s Hands in the very last minutes that I could be called such.”

Dean flinched like a deep secret had been torn out of him--but how could something they both remembered be a secret? Suddenly Castiel was unsure of himself.

“Dean,” he said sharply. As though this, and nothing that preceded it was truly a cause for urgency. “You do remember. You _do_ remember?”

\--Holding him tight, against his back. Propping Castiel upright when he could barely stand, the flesh eaten away from his true form by the weight of a million purgatory souls. Dean’s gentle touch at his shoulder--a touch, and withdraw. To keep him standing. To get it done. Standing him In front of the portal, as the energy sparked across his body and drained from his inner core, dimming from supernova to shining star. One of the last gentle touches he would have from Dean for nearly two years--

The memory was so vivid in his mind, a little off-center from the room, detached and looking back at himself. Maybe not even his memory.

Dean ground his teeth, and threw his head back. The binding spell intensified. The more the Mark fought the restraining force, the closer it pulled him to the earth. Castiel watched the Mark light up along Dean's arm, glowing from his shoulder to his wrist--uselessly feeding more and more energy into the spell.

The spell held. The incantation was meant to hold gods, after all; next to that, even a Knight of Hell was a paltry catch.

The energy in the room was palpable now even to Castiel's human senses. Power buzzed against his skin and set his nerves alight.--The pain would reach excruciating levels in moments--what was Dean doing?

“Context--matters, you said,” Dean panted, turning his head against the chilly floor. 

Something familiar sparked across Castiel’s mind. He recognized something in the tone of Dean’s voice that wasn’t driven by the rage of the Mark, wasn’t the half-demonic impulses tethered to the shards of Dean Winchester’s personality. 

“Yes,” Dean said. It was so short and breathy, it could have been a spasm of pain. “YES.” He said more forcefully. “Do you hear me? Do you remember? _Freely given_.”

“YES,” Dean screamed.

This was another one of those split-second decisions that could make-or-break a life. The Mark was sliding its influence back over Dean’s mind, and his expression through the pain turned feral.

Castiel slowed the passage of time. Because he needed more than just the second Time would allow. He watched Dean’s face curdle into murderous intent as the binding spell reached the point it would shatter bone. He explored the lines along the corner of Dean’s eyes from a genuine smile that was yet to fade completely. From the memory maybe? Or Sam’s quick thinking to put this contingency plan into place? The hilarity of being God’s actual hands, when he was too drunk on power to even hold himself up? Cosmic joke. If Castiel were a betting man, he’d bet it was that one.

When he knew he couldn’t delay any longer (Hannah’s long-distance tug at his mind. Reality-manipulation draining his grace to critical levels. Time may be infinite, but power was not), Castiel rose up in a stream of light from the mouth of his vessel, and rushed out into the kitchen air. The light of his embodied form spilled into the world as time resumed its normal pace. 

Dean held his jaw, and looked him straight in the (eye).

The walls went supernova. 

Down, down, down, into Dean. 

_Dean / Forgive me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of the piece is based on term _casus fortuitus_ , Latin for a chance occurrence / unavoidable accident. This concept is used in contracts to remove liability from parties when the contract can't be fulfilled because of extraordinary circumstances or Acts of God. Let the speculating commence!
> 
> My sincere apology to linguist/classicist readers for abuse of Sumerian for dramatic purposes; nearly everything said about the language in this story will be patently untrue (and it will likely suffer further abuse in the following chapters). On the plus side, all of the Sumerian speakers are dead, and likely won't mind me playing fast and loose with the language's intentions. 
> 
> I've tentatively plotted this piece to have six chapters, two of which have already been written (but need to be heavily revised). All things willing, the next chapter should be up next Monday morning.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There aren't a lot of options when you only have eighteen seconds to decide. 
> 
> This chapter backtracks to the day of the demon cure, where newly-human-again Dean tries to pick up the pieces of his life and figure out how he still fits with Sam and Cas.  
> Chapter now beta'd

Dean groaned and kicked the blanket off the bed. Sweat poured off his body and soaked through the sheets. Live wire emotion prickled under his skin. Any moment now, he would be in a fight for his life. He knew that just as surely as he knew he was in the bunker. And safe. But he could not shake it off--the grit, the seductive sense-memory of gripping _that goddamn jawbone_ in his fist. 

He squeezed his eyes shut. Nothing seemed to stop the Demon highlight reel on repeat in his head; it played over, and over, and over. A new clip whenever he shook his head to clear his mind. When he accepted a cold sandwich from Sam ( _Dean's knife in a demon's stomach_ ). When Cas half-smiled at him across his room and dropped his gaze, then slipped out like an uninvited guest ( _Dean smashing a man's face into the bar_ ). When he fanned out his old photos on the bedspread ( _Dean standing in the Electrical doorway, emergency lights bathing his face in red_ ).

The demon cure had taken his smoke and violence and hollowed it out; it left nothing in its place.

Maybe holiness feels like having your insides scraped out, Dean thought.

As he fought off the intrusive thoughts, Dean though he'd heard his door whisper open. But he soon lost touch with the room; he felt himself slip away, finally, into sleep--a deep, natural sleep like he hadn’t felt in months. _Years_ , maybe. It was an unexpected relief.

Dean slept. The rest of his night was a dreamless shape and color: an unending, waving field of electric blue.

* * *

Sam drew back the needle. The morphine did its work. Sam threw the syringe across the room. The hearty plastic bounced off the wall, and skittered to a halt just under Dean’s bed. That was the last time he was injecting his brother, he thought fiercely.

Pressure squeezed behind his eyes. A wave of emotion threatened to wash over him. Sam pinched the bridge of his nose and blinked, blinked, until the tears misted. He'd pushed down so much. Had to fight back the bile to strap Dean down. The cure was so unlike what he'd done with Crowley in the ramshackle church. Dean had seen the doubt pounding at his chest, and spat it back in his face with that too-damn-wide grin. And it had gotten to him; Sam had doubted, double-checked, and second-guessed his way through the ritual. 

_What if I made a mistake with that final blessing?_ he thought--and Sam just couldn't. He _couldn't_ doubt it now.

“Dean, I am out of options,” he started, and then stopped. “Man, I just. I thought you could do with one night of sleep."

Dean laid impassively on the bed. He was already gone, in a deep morphea-induced sleep.

“You can be a stubborn asshole when you want to be,” Sam said hotly.

No, that wasn’t what he wanted to say. Why was this so goddamn hard?

The camaraderie they'd had to rebuild after each blow--that the Winchester boys should have down to a science at this point--hadn't really come back after the _angel bullshit_ last year. An emotional minefield separated him from his brother, and Sam missed those easy days when Dean could toss off an apology and Sam would actually believe that they were on an upward trajectory--better hunters, better brothers, better lives. He missed how he saw their life in his mind: theories traded in half-empty libraries; lazy, slow days tossing back beers over diner fries and wilted salads; Bobby, Dean, and him. He missed the ease in which he could edit out the apocalypses, leviathans, and blood. But there were limits. Much as Sam tried, he couldn't forget the demon trials. Or the family they'd lost.

“I know you’re going to try to laugh it off with me tomorrow morning, if we try to talk. I can’t, Dean. I just can't this time." Sam's voice broke.

"Cas said--" No. He couldn't think about it right now.

"I’m going to go get drunk tonight, because tonight, I can. Tonight I can let go a little.”

“But we'll work cases again--and maybe you'll actually be--” he couldn’t bring himself to say the words _my brother_ , “--and it might be okay. After some time.” 

Sam searched Dean's sleep-slack face for some sign that this might _not be his brother_. He stood up, and looked around the room. The books, the tossed-around files, the wooden cross half-fallen on his shelf. It was all so Dean, it struck him right in the heart. He choked back a quiet cry.

“Everything in my power… I’m going to find a Plan B. But, look, you have to...you’re gonna have to. Find your own Plan B. ‘Cause if you leave it up to me, I don’t think you’ll like how far I’ll go--how far I’ve already gone--to bring you back.”

“Don’t be too angry tomorrow morning, okay?” He patted the side of his brother’s cheek, allowing this Winchester-amount of vulnerability out, and then it was done. Sam tamped everything back down into his box. 

“Okay,” he said to himself. 

Sam waited for a moment, then he fished the damaged syringe from where it rolled under Dean's bed. He stared at the sad, half-bent tip. If he had to repeat the cure in the morning--he would swallow it all down and do it again. And again. And again.

* * *

It was a new routine, not exactly _new_ new but reminiscent of the time after Kevin. Sam's retreat to his room was eerily similar to the days after the angel exorcism. Doors around the bunker shut with a quiet click. Dean felt each one as strongly as if they had been slammed in his face. Dean responded by closing himself off in headphones so not even the sound of Zep would leak into the bunker, like he wasn't even there.

This routine was slightly different, sure. Dean didn't offer an apology, Sam didn't ask how he slept. Neither of them tried to bridge the silence that settled over them in the kitchen. If Dean was watching films in the library, Sam would pull a dusty book from the shelf, do a subtle 360-scan, and then shift his attention to a different room, as though the reading had triggered a memory (or a cross-reference in the archive). He'd wander out only moments after he arrived, nose buried in the pages. Different routine, same results; Dean in one room, Sammy invariably in another.

Dean wasn't stupid--a few splashes of sanctified blood wasn't going to change the fact his black-eyed bitch had swung at Sammy. He hadn't earned the right for Sam to trust him, not really.

So He didn't complain when he only saw his brother at meals. 

Because as luck would have it, he still had a brother to eat with.

* * *

It went that way for a week. 

Today, the heat was out in room 23 (again, great). But it gave Dean the excuse to linger an extra ten minutes in his brother's company. He even bit back his most cutting snark (thirty years in an all-or-nothing fight against evil hadn't exactly earned him any badges in home heating repair), before Sam excused himself to sort through the magical object archives in 7B.

So, he did what any self-respecting Winchester would do: Dean hauled the toolbox down to the HVAC room in sub-floor 1, throwing out mock complaints to the walls.

Passing 7B, Dean hazarded a glance through the thrown-open door. Boxes were open, contents pulled out--labeled and lined up along a sorting desk--and Sam was deep in the stacks, swallowed up in the cell-line shadows the metal shelves threw across the room. One box caught his eye, a green safety-deposit-looking box from the set marked “Unconfirmed Objects” when Dean had taken the last full inventory a few years back. The one with its contents upended over two chairs and a desk had a missing corner. Dean racked his memory--was it the one marked “Unexplained,” “Really Weird,” or “Do Not Touch”?

 _Do Not Touch_. Heh, did he have a joke for that. Before he could shake it from his mind, Dean called out: “Sammy, hey Sammy!”

The sounds of a cut-off conversation, and the quiet click of an old clamshell phone. “Yeah,” he thought he heard grunted back at him through the stacks. Sam slid out of the darkness wearing one hell of a poker face. He realized with a start that the first time in a week he'd actually called his brother by name.

“Just don’t break anything, okay?” Dean said, cowed by his brother’s sudden appearance. 

“Got it, thanks.” Sam tucked an object much smaller than a phone into his pocket.

Hey, if they're doing the talking thing again, might as well try a question. “Find what you’re looking for, Columbo--” and nods his head once toward the table.

“Cas thinks so,” Sam said, and Dean’s attitude immediately cooled. 

“You two--" Dean licked his lips, like a goddamn Pavlovian response. What was that about? "Workin’ a case?” 

The _without me_ hardly needed to be added; Sam straightened up immediately, his whole posture one of careful attention, and he held out his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “There was a case we were working back when you were--” Sam ran his hand up and down. Yeah, Dean understood that meant a demon, lucky him--got it in one. “It ended badly. My arm in a sling, Cas hacking up a lung when he tried to heal it. The lore had nothing, less than nothing, _two pages in cuneiform_ nothing.” Sam paused here, an imperceptible gap to anyone but him. This is the gap where Kevin would go, and couldn’t. He was on the growing List of Things Winchesters Don't Talk About, and apparently now was not the time Sammy was going to start. “So we just decided to--”

“--let it go?--”

“--come at it a different way.” Sam gave him a pinched look that kind of warmed his heart--How long had it been since Sam had been _annoyed_ at him?

“That thing in your pocket, that your different way?” Dean asked as casually as possible. "What does Cas think?"

Sam chuckled, and looked at Dean levelly. "You remember when you shoved my soul back into my body, looking like Swiss cheese? And Cas howled that it was the wrong thing to do?"

Dean closed his eyes and let out a short bark of a laugh. Simple. Sometimes the emptiness wasn't so bad; he couldn't even _joke_ about the soul a year ago. "Point taken."

"Working this case--I keep hearing Bobby, you know?" Sam continued in his best Bobby impression: 'It's risky, stupid, and half-impossible--' " 

" '--but you're dead-set on it anyway, god help us. Don't get your fool brother killed.' " Dean finished. He must have an honest-to-god smile on his face, because Sam was grinning back at him. The room went quiet, but it was a good quiet; maybe the first companionable silence they'd had this week. Dean cleared his throat in the silence. "I mean, if it wouldn't mess up the case, I could take a crack at it? Fresh eyes, and all that--"

“--Hey, how’s that heating coming along?” Sam said quickly. Dean’s sure his face fell, because a moment later, Sam apologized: “Sorry--I just--what if the problem spreads, right?”

“Right.”

And he was on his way again to friggin’ sub-floor 1 with the toolbox slamming into his thigh.

But hey, bright side (because that’s the kind of person he was today), it was the longest conversation he had with his brother in a non-kitchen room in months.

* * *

Dean stared at the waist-high rows of Depression-era heating units until he was sure he’d set them on fire with the power of his incredibly pissed-off mind.

He recognized a few occult symbols down their side in faded red paint and neat typewriter text taped to wall (were these powered by selective thaumaturgic reuptake? What did that even _mean_?), but for the most part, the eighty-year old machines had no documentation. Not even a peep about how to properly remove the filters without causing a mini-blackout in the power grid (he’d already done that once when attempting to repair the fridge). 

In theory, the heat issue could be caused by a blocked ventilation shaft. He'd need to follow the ventilation ducts to look for a blockage. Unless these units were run on the background magical _bullshit_ this compound generated. Then what? Heat outage caused by not enough Mystical Bullshit in their neck of the woods?

He'd start by pulling one of the panels off the units. Dean reached for the wrench. He touched it and--

\--his memory of the day was perfect. Not dimmed like the fight with Yellow-Eyes at the Devil's Gate, or dimming like the receding near-past of Kevin, or Bobby, or Lisa. Each moment was a clear drop through which he could see everything, and only at the edges notice the slight distortion of demonic taint. The seeping mania of it. The carefree whistle of violence. The hammer he swung at Sammy's head--

_It’s over, Dean. It’s over. Dean...it’s over._

The words ran through his head and he chased after them as though his life depended on it. 

Something was supposed to happen after he touched the wrench, he was sure of it; something that had already happened. 

And yeah, he had perfect recall of that day in the bunker. He damn well knew he was being coy about what he wanted, in his own head, where he had thought after his months-long howl at the moon, he’d promised himself not to conceal hard truths under layers of bullshit. To not make himself so miserable that the only escape was the Mark, or Crowley, or both.

Fuck. Dean squeezed his eyes shut. Carefully, he laid the wrench down on the cement floor and walked away.

* * *

The phone pinged in the middle of a Three Stooges film.

Dean practically dove for it. He checked his messages; a group-message from Cas, his ETA in Jerusalem, Ohio from the Mount Zion Gas-N-Sip. This was new--Cas updating them like they should know his whereabouts.

Before he’d really thought about it, Dean had shot off a reply.

_If all the good angels are gathered at a rest-stop, who exactly’s left in Heaven to judge the righteous?_

It felt easy, natural. (Dean remembered: Hebrews 12 jokes were always a slam dunk with Sam and Bobby.) 

A minute slipped past, and Dean felt doubt creep in. Cas would get the joke, right? Two years of angel crap before the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t, and Dean couldn’t help that that stuff was seared in his memory as deep as his bones. Surely, Cas would get what he’s about.

Were the things that felt easy the things he should embrace or deny? He didn’t trust himself, not exactly a newsflash. But was this _really_ going to be the first things they said to each other since the bunker?

Dean typed another reply. This one was considerably harder. He deleted it twice, and backspaced a long apology. His finger hovered over the screen… dismissing all of the _this is a bad idea_ impulses as they arose. 

He hit send.

_Sorry buddy, just messing around. How’s Jerusalem?_

Dean rewound the film, started it up from the busted pipe gag. He only half-watched, his eye wandering across the table to the phone. He laughed louder than he felt necessary. Loud enough to maybe tell Sam just how okay everything was.

Five minutes later, the phone pinged.

Castiel replied: _arid. :)_

* * *

By day nine, things were almost normal. Sam did more than just eat meals with him. He talked shop; commented on the latest monographs he excavated from the archive. They even had conversations where Sam came into the room further than the doorjamb. Cas sent more group-messages. Destinations, reports of road conditions along lesser-traveled Winchester-routes, magical objects held in his hand for scale (and seriously, he was an angel, but did he have no sense of shit you just don’t touch?) and short descriptions for cataloging.

Sure, there was that empty ache behind his chest. But it had been there in varying degrees for years--and only abated when the Mark got its claws in. The emptiness signified that Dean was finding his equilibrium, becoming person-shaped in more than just his skin. 

Things were definitely looking up.

Day ten, Sam started talking up cases. They got out of the bunker, stretched their metaphorical legs. Worked cases. Hunted things. Saved people. Vacuumed the trash out of Baby. Saw a musical about their lives. Got a new Samulet. Fought an honest-to-god god. That wasn’t even an everyday for the Winchesters.

Sam kept up a slightly mysterious text conversation. Before and after Kate Take Two, he tapped out short messages that he always conveniently shielded from Dean with an innocent turn inward, slipping the phone screen under the tabletop. Afterward, Sam field-stripped his Taurus twice, occasionally fiddling with something in his pocket. 

Dean joked more than once Sam was finally sweet on someone, but Dean figured it was probably to keep in contact with Jody or whomever was running the hunter network these days. Was there anyone, Dean wondered vaguely. He didn't ask Sam; it didn't feel like it was his place.

And as they criss-crossed the country, they found themselves further and further away from that day in the bunker and the thing Dean knew flew fast on their heels.

* * *

The Samulet dangled from the rearview mirror as Dean swung the Impala into the parking lot of the A&S shooting range in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He’d dropped Sam off at an anonymous little motel with a ridiculous name--Shepherd’s Rest--and an even more atrocious sense of what could be done with indoor wicker chairs--an hour before. They’d progressed to the point where Sam was willing to let him off the leash for unsupervised fun. Dean had made a beeline for the first late-night indoor target range they’d passed on their way into the city. 

Dean holstered his Colt 1911 before he entered the range, and gave a friendly wave to the staff. He loved these little ranges off the interstate: open late, membership optional, shooting bays almost always empty after 9pm.

Dean skipped the fake credit cards and plunked down the fifty for an hour’s worth of range time and a box of .45 automatic caliber rounds.

"Will you need a rental?" The woman at the counter asked, patting the counter display of rental guns next to the cash register. Dean gave them quick once-over; nothing jumped out at him.

Dean slapped the holster against his hip. "Brought my own tonight, ma'am." 

On a busy night, Dean might have booked the two lanes around him (just to have space from other shooters; he didn't like an _audience_ ), but with the only other shooter in the opposite bay--he only needed the one lane tonight. He even managed a friendly smile to the range officer, a woman with a tight bun and a perceptive stare, when she asked to inspect his weapon. Except for the two of them, Shooting Bay 1 was empty. The inspection was more for boredom than anything else. She checked the gun (it was unloaded, please, it wasn’t Dean’s first day at this rodeo) looked over the ivory handle of the Colt appraisingly, and sent him on his way with a “safety equipment is required at all times, sir.”

He took up position on his lane, loaded the Colt with the purchased ammunition, and squared himself in front of the target. He looked over at the range officer, who tapped her ear. Right, safety equipment. Dean picked up the range’s heavy-duty earmuffs (they had seen better days) and fit them over his head. A pair of extremely sketchy yellow safety glasses followed.

Dean pointed the gun down range, and squeezed off a round. It sliced through the paper target and thudded into the reinforced, rubberized walls. Dean pulled up his safety glasses. Oh yeah. Right through the throat.

Two days since they’d ganked Calliope.

\--Another through the heart.

Sure, it wasn’t Dean who’d struck the killing blow. But it was the closest he’d been to death--to something _he_ almost killed in eighteen days.

\--Three through the forehead in a tight grouping.

Yeah, this might take the edge off. Only just, but that was all he needed. Seventeen days since the cure. He was coping.

\--A few more rounds, extremities. Arms, legs, hands, feet.

Seventeen days since the black of his eyes had slid back, and Dean had seen the life he led in the shadows come out into the naked light of his conscience. Seventeen days since, “you look terrible.”

\--Again. Head, heart, throat, eyes. Dean pulled back the slide, and dropped out the empty clip. 

What had that meant, exactly? _Why the hell hadn’t he stayed?_

He fiddled for his phone with the other hand, slid the lock with his thumb. No new messages. 

He typed: _Cas. Buddy. Why didn’t you stay?_

After some thought, he saved the message to drafts and laid the phone on the gun table.

* * *

He finished up at the range ten minutes early, and returned to a dark motel room. Sam was gone (but hey, it meant Dean didn’t have to face those wicker chairs in the light); Dean didn’t give anything a second thought as he tumbled into bed.

* * *

Dean dreamed.

He dreamed of white walls with fancy molding, wide marble countertops, and empty-to-the-rafter rooms. He could feel but not see the cracks that threaded underneath the topcoat of paint. The old stains of blood that white just couldn’t cover up. The faults ran through the drywall, through the foundation. The whole house was coming down.

That’s when recognition hit him like a sharp slap--the floor was ringed in blood.

A blade was in his hands, flickering between a kitchen knife and a silver-filigreed short sword, the kind he saw in angel paintings.

What didn’t change--the blood. It ran down his arm, pooled above the Mark, and moved in wider and wider circles from him. 

The blood was everywhere. And a scream, rising, rising, impossibly loud and then louder. The world washed out in static and Dean found himself in a gray twilight, an in-between place--not awake, not asleep, his body immobile and, god, he wished he could reach the blue field from his dreamless sleep.

It was like nightmares from Hell, Redux. But there was one appreciable difference: Dean knew in his bones this wasn't a memory.

* * *

They needed another case, fast. It was clear to both of them before sun-up: Dean was completely wired.

Vanquishing a Greek goddess had been an unusual hunt. Sam had hoped the thrill of the case would do for Dean what a week in the bunker hadn’t-- but the calm that came with a case didn’t even last half a week. On top of that, Dean had smelled of gunpowder when Sam had rolled back in from the Indiana State library. He'd been at a shooting range. Not a surprising choice given Dean's reaction to the last whiskey bottle he'd found (he'd dashed it against the kitchen wall, then sponged up the mess as an apology). But last night’s outing to the shooting range hadn't even worked as a temporary fix. 

More than once, Dean's hand had twitched into throwing position on his bowie when Sam had slammed open a door a little too hard. Dean just set his jaw into a grim line, and polished the knife up to a frightening sheen. 

By the time Sam emerged from the coffeehouse with two of the smallest cups of coffee he’d seen on the road, Dean had switched to car maintenance. He had adjusted, buffed, and ratcheted his way around the Impala and into a state approaching calm certitude.

Dean wiped down with a grease rag before he took the cup, bolted it like whiskey, and turned an 100-watt smile on Sam.

That newly found zen? Oh yeah. He definitely had a case.

* * *

Dean explained everything a second time on the road, as they flew along I-84 towards Connecticut. Sam was already on board, but he could tell Dean was trying to sweeten the pot (maybe just for himself). A will reading in New Canaan, that was definitely a new one for them.

Sam held back his reservations. That plus the coffee were Sam’s peace offering for the day. He had prepared a list of counter-arguments if Dean pushed for a more dangerous case while they were in town.

His hand found his pocket subconsciously, and patted down the contents inside once, twice, before he realized what he was doing and stopped.

Dean laid out his version of the “case” which ended with more and more elaborate bequests on behalf of Bobby Singer. Dean temporized; he imagined Bunny LaCroix was a former romantic fling (hey, hadn’t they all been surprised by Ellen Visyak?), or a heroic rescue (from--what did they have in Connecticut? Ghost ships? Uppity ghost innkeepers?). But there was always an antique sofa or cutlery set in it for them.

Sam tried to relax. He watched the road wind in a gentle turn around a bare half-hill that was more grass than had any business inside a long stretch of forest. 

All he had was details, and the context for those details. That’s what being a hunter was: seeing the ghost from the flickering light. The way Dean adjusted his mirror, the too-tight grip on the steering wheel, the way he half-laughed at his own flights of fancy, as if he’d forgotten the things that truly amused him (bad, really the worst kinds of puns). The way Dean creeped around his brother, not just pushing it down and pushing through, but the _devastation_ in his face when Sam appeared in a doorway, or from behind a bookshelf; and for a moment, his brother’s face a mask of regret from the evidence of his living, breathing brother doing just that in front of him.

Details. 

Even in the drowsy evening stretch of last hundred miles to Connecticut, it kept Sam on edge. 

* * *

They hung around the motel until it was a presentable afternoon hour. Dean drummed his fingers on everything with a suitable surface. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, but Dean had decided that they’d present themselves as _Sam and Dean Winchester_. No suits, no ties, no fake names.

Sam texted Cas. It was more habit than actual concern on their not-a-case case. 

He typed out: _2W, mission a go 5h CIBTA_. Sam and Dean, heading out on a mission, 5 hours total time, check in by text after. A mashup of military code and abbreviations that Cas had grown incredibly fond of using that--most importantly--was completely dissimilar to the challenge codes John Winchester had drilled into them. It was so on-the-nose (after they had spent their entire lives learning to be subtle), Sam hoped if Dean got his hands on the phone, it would appear to be totally innocuous angel stuff. 

“Should we take little cocktail forks?” Dean asked, tugging his collar into place. “Are we supposed to bring something?”

“It’s a funeral. We show up, we mourn, they mourn, lawyer reads a document, it’ll be fine.”

Sam hit send.

Before he could slip it back in his pocket, his phone pinged.

Cas replied: _Understood._

* * *

Blood ran down the knife and splattered on the floor. Dean could feel the rattle in his chest ease up, ease up, and now he could breathe. The shifter was dead, and he could breathe if only he could catch his breath--

He tried to fight past the kill-kill-kill feelings pumping through his body like narcotics. They promised him the world. Sweet relief. Anything. Just one more body on the ground. 

“Dean?” 

It was a loaded question, and aimed right at him. How could he answer? The shifter was dead. One bullet, then four more. Silver, all of them. But then he had grabbed the knife. He lost count of what he had inflicted on the body in the haze, but the blood was everywhere. It was on _him_. 

“Sammy?” he tried. 

“Yeah, that’s right. It’s me. Dean, I need you to do one thing for me, and then we can go. We do this, and we can head right out of town. Back to the bunker, or you know--anywhere. Does that sound good? Is that okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Dean said.

“I need you to put the blade down. Dean, put it down.”

Good ole Sammy, taking charge. But he couldn’t loosen his grip, he just couldn’t. 

“Dean!” Sam’s voice took on the sharp edge of reproach. Dean’s eyes weren’t focusing. They hadn’t risen above a far-distant point along the wall. White walls. Rings of blood. Knife in his hands. The dream. Suddenly those white, cracked walls came up around him, and he felt the hollowness of the memory sink into this house, until they became the same place. 

“I… don’t...” he paused, finally dragging his eyes over the room, the thick bloody circles the arc of his blade had made. “I think I dreamed this,” he said quietly. 

“The shifter’s dead, the family or whatever, is safe. Let’s just--we can go, but you have to give me the knife. _Give me the knife Dean_.”

“The knife…” Dean glanced down at it. His voice sounded so distant from his body, coming back to his ears through the roll and crash of the ocean. “I thought I let it go.”

Dean flexed his fingers and stared hard at the blade. 

“Dean?” He looked up at his brother. His shoulder was pressed forward, holding his body away in a narrow profile. A defensive hunter stance he’d seen a thousand times. Suddenly Sam drew himself up, and he snapped out his best John Winchester tone: “Dean, stay here.” 

Dean responded to the tone of authority; or rather he didn’t. He waited the excruciating seconds that his brother left the kitchen and returned--seconds filled with nothing but blood.

Sam returned with a small bundle of herbs, a copper brazier, and an empty vial. 

“Gonna summon me a good shrink, Sammy?” Dean deadpanned. Nobody laughed (not even inwardly).

“Just gonna do a purification, for the shifter blood.” Sam stoppered some of the blood in his (now full) vial. “Seriously negative things went down in this house. You know, Plan B. Stop a haunting before it starts, save hunters the hassle down the road.”

“We don’t owe these backbiters anything,” Dean muttered.

“Why don’t you work on putting down the knife, and we can argue about who owes who what?”

Sam fiddled with the thing in his pocket. It was Sam’s new tell; he was nervous.

“Deep breaths, right Sammy?” 

“Deep breaths, Dean.”

“This was--" Dean grasped for words. They were hazy, indistinct specters in his mind; always slipping away when he got close to the right one. "my first kill, you know. Since--well, you know that too.”

“Yeah Dean, I know,” Sam said. He tipped the entire bag of herbs into the brazier, and gently swirled them with his finger.

Alarms sounded in Dean’s mind. How could Sam have pre-measured ingredients for a purifying spell? They had never performed purifying rituals for much the same reason that no hunter ever did: you had to swing some pretty major mojo to cleanse even the smallest section of the earth. Hunters didn’t have the kind of spiritual cred to splash that kind of power around on a regular hunt.

Spell-work in non-determined locations was another thing: amounts had to be adjusted depending on local conditions; ambient power; time of year; geomagnetic friggin’ fluctuations. No magic on earth swung prepared components, was his point. Not even Demonic magic, as Dean had learned from one of Crowley’s drunken tirades; that required calibration to the Ruling Domain, and power differential accrued within the Domain. And that had been (to put it mildly) in flux over the past eight years. 

As far as Dean Winchester knew (and that was pretty damn far given his travel in metaphysical circles) the only kind of magic that didn’t require context at all was the worst kind: summoning spells. Fluffy wings and halos. Heavenly stuff. 

All that raced through Dean’s head as Sam emptied the second bag into the copper vessel.

“Sam--”

Sam must have heard the warning in his tone, because he stuttered out an “I’m sorry Dean--” as he pulled a silver coin from his pocket.

He finally felt the haze breaking: a hot, blazing anger welled up. His lip curled into a snarl. “Making a wish, Sammy?” 

Sam softly mouthed lines, lower than he could make out. 

Dean shifted the knife into his off-hand, then back into his dominant grip. He could let go of it now, if he wanted too. 

He didn’t want to.

Sam looked at him with pleading eyes. Don’t do this. Don’t do this. You’re my brother. Don’t.

Sam raised the coin. 

The sight of the coin stole his breath. He _knew_ that coin. He knew it, he _knew_ it, but from where? One of the Men of Letters inventories?

Sam’s voice picked up, and he dashed the shifter blood into the brazier. An electric surge of Heavenly power washed through the room, and actually pushed him back on his feet. The feeling of a white, endless ocean swept over him. The Mark came to life, blazing a path through every artery and vein in his his body. Dean felt _alive_.

Sam finished the incantation, a lit match in his hand. With the gall of being so _human_ and so _right_ all of the goddamn time, he said: “Plan B, Dean. I said you weren’t gonna like it,” and dropped the match into the brazier.

The tenuous grip he had on the Mark slipped beneath his rage.

Dean saw red.

* * *

Dean came back to himself just long enough to feel himself pressed up along Castiel’s body. He groaned. Lousy timing to lose himself. This wasn’t the same as the months as a demon, which (yep, quick check, pantsless in front of Crowley) he still remembered with absolutely clarity. He honestly could not remember how or when Cas had even shown up-- 

Or why he was crushing Castiel to his chest in a particularly violent romance clinch or whatever. 

He tried to pull his arms back, but they weren’t under his power. All he managed to do was ball up one of his fists and loosen his death grip. Vaguely, he hoped Castiel could shake him from there. That he could pull back and help Dean get a handle on whatever _this_ was.

Cas could squeeze out if he wanted. Okay. He could go if he wanted.

The angel stayed pressed up against him. 

_Run, Cas. Run, you dumb bastard,_ he thought helplessly. 

He lost himself again.

* * *

Dean ground his teeth, and threw his head back. He would not let the Mark take him here. Needed a moment of concentration to build a wall against the encroaching _things_ that were not Dean Winchester.

He latched on to the first phrase that bubbled out of his mind, and clung to it like a life-preserver. 

_God’s hands, god’s hands, god’s hands,_ he chanted.

The power in those words seemed to well up from a place even deeper than the reflexive rage of the Mark, and Dean shoved it as far back into his mind as he could. He was back in control, temporarily--how far that control went, he hadn’t a single clue.

He tested his arms and legs. Nope, limb control was not on the table. But this time it wasn't the Mark: he was actively restrained, and it was intensifying.

An invisible force bore down on his chest, knocking the wind right out of him. For a moment, before his vision focused, he thought it might be Cas; but then he saw the angel’s worry-lined face only a few inches from his own. He saw the terror in Castiel’s eyes, if that's the panic level Cas is at, Dean needed to think _fast_.

Sam’d had eighteen days to create his Plan B, or whatever this was; Dean maybe had, on an outside guess, less than twenty seconds before he blacked out from lack of oxygen, or gave over to the bloodlust tearing through his body. He was on the balls of his feet (metaphorically), ready for the title fight, Dean Winchester versus the Mark of Cain. He just needed time to think.

Eighteen seconds. And though he could neither move nor touch any of it, for eighteen whole seconds, Dean knew he had the entire length and breadth of the world. He just had to _think_.

* * *

The first thing he thought: _Half-impossible, my ass, Sammy_.

The second thing he thought: _Pain helped._ It gave him clarity. Cut through the cobwebs of the Mark.

Dean tried to reach for the Mark, to physically hold it back with his hand. But as he inched his hand across his arm, the spell tightened its grip.

The third thing he thought: _reacts to struggle, huh? I can do that._

Dean summoned up the blind, unyielding rage of the Mark. He felt it glow and catch fire on his forearm; his whole body a conduit for its power. He pushed against the spell, harder than he fought against Abaddon. He pumped in everything he had, and then more for good measure.

The spell rebounded the Mark’s energy. _Clever, clever Sammy._ Whatever. He’d have time to admire it when he’s dead (or free). 

The Mark held back most of the pain, but not the pressure. His bones were beginning to fracture.

Cas was right in his face, close enough to see his lips rise and fall, the strain of breathing raggedly plain in the sweat across his brow.

The fourth thing he thought, which if this was going to be the last hurrah of human Dean Winchester, he's damn well going to think about this. _Why does this keep happening to us in the shittiest situations; why couldn’t this just be a regular case, when, maybe, I could do something about this and not feel like a fucked-up demonic-tainted angel predator?_

The fifth thing he thought: _I'm almost out of seconds._

Dean thought of, and discarded, three different ideas.

Send me to Purgatory. I'll kill my weight in monsters.

Cut of my goddamn arm. Even angelic bullshit required _vessel integrity_.

Smite me so hard God can't find my pieces.

Like it didn't even matter that his bones would liquify before he could get out of this trap. All that mattered was what he did _after_ , when the Mark had dug back into his mind; when he was a demon, and not even in control of the limited shit he could care about with his shiny new prescription eyes.

And then another half-impossible thing happened: Dean remembered one of those lumpy kinds of memory buried under hard drinking and fighting-for-his-life survival. 

_\--A conversation he’d carried on with Cas (or that he’d tried to, anyway) in the mental hospital, a day after he’d woken up and his marbles weren’t all there. They were playing Sorry! because playing Sorry was the closest Cas could approach the idea of apology without actually, you know, being apologetic._

_“I’m sorry,” Cas had said contritely, because he couldn’t stop apologizing for things that didn’t require entire novels to describe his feelings. “It’s your turn.”_

_Dean picked up a card, and held it aloft as a 'see, yes, I can play along' to his friend._

_Cas smiled. (How wrong was it that Cas smiling was a cause for concern. No, he told himself. Isn't the smile; it's the vacant way his eyes seemed to go_ through _his body, to watch the back of his chair.) He moved his piece, and knocked it roughly against the board._

_“Why’d you do it Cas?" he finally said. His voice was small, started out even a little broken, but he had to say it. "It’s like you’re not even here--”_

_“_ Freely given _.” Cas scooped up his pieces and dumped them into Dean’s home space._

_“What? No, god, not the game. Your mind, Cas. What makes you, you.”_

_“It was mine, and because it was mine, I could give it freely.”_

_“I don’t follow.”_

_“When you say yes to an angel, it’s the context that makes it a sacrifice. You’re you, and you say, ‘Freely Given.’ Then you’re not you, you’re someone else.” Castiel looks up at him with the widest eyes he’s ever seen on him, red-rimmed, tearing up (from happiness or horror, he’s not sure). “Why can’t I say yes--?”_

Eighteen seconds, and fuck his life, Dean actually had a plan. 

“Context--matters, you said once,” Dean panted, turning his head against the cold floor to find the resolve that he was seeking. He turned his eyes back to his friend, because he couldn’t. If this was the last time he saw with his own eyes, he couldn’t go with his face hidden against the goddamn tile. 

Dean prayed to Cas, _It’s me. Please, know me. Please, Castiel. Trust me._ A flicker of hope crossed Castiel’s face that looked suspiciously like Dean had granted him a two-minutes-to-midnight reprieve. 

“Yes,” Dean breathed out, barely a whisper. He tried again: “YES.”

“Do you hear me, Castiel? Do you remember? _Freely given_.” 

“YES,” Dean screamed.

Time felt as though it had slowed or stopped--or maybe the Mark had finally quit playing around and had suspended him within himself, unable to push through the transparent cage of his mind into the outside world. 

The walls erupted in light.

He didn’t look away.

_Castiel / Having neither beginning of days nor end of life / Draw near to me / Yet once more / The Glory and the Light / I cannot be shaken / But by your consuming fire_

Dean lost himself. This time, it felt like coming home. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey readers! Sorry for the late update. This chapter required a good deal more editing than the weekend allowed for. 
> 
> In this chapter, we back-track to the day of the demon cure. Hopefully it's not too repetitive when I do that (it may or may not happen again towards the end of the fic). I want to present the lead-up through both Cas' eyes and Dean's eyes, and how Sam's plan intersects and doesn't intersect with either of them. If you couldn't already tell, I'm a huge fan of TFW and of Sam's arc during S10. So even though this is heading towards shippy waters, this fic will deal with the fallout for all three of them.
> 
> Up next: more funny business with Sumerian things, coins-aplenty, and the return of Hannah!
> 
> References, ahoy!  
> [Hebrews 12](http://biblehub.com/hebrews/12.htm) is a good read and thematic to the story (plus, it's the direct inspiration for Dean's impromptu poetry). But for those of you who'd like the down-and-dirty version, the relevant section to Dean's joke is:
>
>> But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect.
> 
>   
> There's kind of a maudlin humor in Dean's joke of "who will judge the righteous?" given that Supernatural is a world of demons, angels, gods and devils--but capital-G God and Jesus don't seem to be around, and redemption doesn't really seem possible within the cosmological framework of the canonverse. For a further study of the super-creepy dynamics of death in SPN canon, please see balder12's [Five Dangers of the Veil](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3239093).
> 
> Also, yes there is a Jerusalem, OH. I can only wish that it has a Gas-N-Sip called Mount Zion in the SPN universe.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel had walked the earth when even its gods were old; surely taking Dean as a vessel shouldn't be that much of a challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks go out to MollyC for her last-minute beta!

The light rushed into Dean. Heat spread through his body, crashed down his spine faster than second thoughts (which he was having none of, by the way), through his shoulders, forearms, fingers. His body lit up as a thousand new nerve endings exploded to life. The glow attenuated, bubbling up to the surface of his skin. For a few breathless seconds, the sensation was too much; the world was burning, and it would never, _never_ stop.

But then numbness followed a gradual lessening of everything. Less pain, less feeling, less awareness. A drugging touch.

 _Cas_.

Dean kept the name in his mind for as long as he could. --And then he couldn't, hell, he didn’t even want to, and he tumbled into a warm, gray twilight.

* * *

The pressure of the binding spell slackened as Dean receded. There was plenty of space for the two of them without the awkward chafing between angel and human that happened in normal vessels, but Dean’s soul curled up like a kitten and withdrew from his grace.

Much as he didn’t want to, he remembered Dean joking about _that one time Jimmy showed up instead of Cas. Wasn’t that hilarious how he ate ten burgers and gave Sam the slip?_

 _Like being chained to a comet,_ Castiel thought bitterly.

Castiel’s oversight with Jimmy wasn’t inexperience. In human vessels, he had walked the streets of Memphis when even its gods were old; fought hand-to-hand on the fields of the Achaeans; stood as a divine messenger at the Tribunal of Ur. No, Castiel just hadn’t _felt the importance_ of keeping Jimmy separate from himself, so he hadn’t even tried. He had blundered into Jimmy’s body like a guest who breaks all of his host’s furniture, and burns down the house for good measure.

Making a mistake wasn’t on the table, here; Castiel recognized _don’t touch leave me be_ signs, and flattened himself against the walls of Dean’s mind--as far back as he could fold himself without triggering vessel failure.

Strangely, there was not as much space as he would have expected in an archangel’s vessel. The graceways--the hollowed out network in the human body that, much like arteries and veins carried blood, channeled energy--were charred, disintegrating, barely usable. The blasted-out channels may have been a symptom of long-term demonic possession, or even housing one of the more powerful members of the Host (foolish enough to harm the vessel before leaving it), but Dean had done neither of these things. Experience was no guide to Castiel here; he’d never seen a vessel in such specific internal disrepair.

Vessel. Body. This was _Dean_ he was thinking about. Castiel felt a small spike of guilt. Time had a funny way of solidifying Dean Winchester’s opinions when he set his mind to one; _angel condom_ couldn’t be any more palatable to Dean now than it had during the Apocalypse.

 _Impossible circumstances_ , he reminded himself, and set his mind to thinking about the new mission. The new mission, very similar to the old mission, just with a new vessel-related wrinkle: return his friend to safety as quickly as possible, respect the privacy of Dean’s soul.

Castiel tried bitterly not to miss his wings.

* * *

Dean had been sandwiched between Dream and Waking before, so that was okay. The last time was only a day ago, he thought; but it felt remote. Years had passed, as far as he could tell.

A warm hand brushed against him. Maybe he’d fallen asleep on a couch. And maybe someone pulled an afghan over him, resting their hand for a minute on his shoulder like Lisa used to after he had stopped day drinking and weeping until his eyes dried out and his taste for the domestic life curdled.

He wrapped around himself with a sigh.

/ Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. /

He didn’t feel anything.

Maybe this was his race already run. Rest. _Finally_.

He had damn well earned it.

* * *

He knew that he must look a sight to any observer; Castiel clenched and unclenched his (Dean's) fist slowly, rhythmically, as he catalogued the unfamiliar weight of Dean's body around him. He ran through the new vessel checklist--bones, tendons, ligaments, organs, muscles, nerves, skin--expending grace to knit together the pressure fractures in his chest and a particularly nasty compound fracture in Dean’s leg. The binding spell had done a number on Dean’s body. It would have been only a matter of seconds before it started to pancake Dean’s organs.

He planted a fist firmly against the ground, and pushed his vessel upright.

A few inches off the ground, the world titled wildly. His cheek hit the floor with a surprising jolt. Painful. That was actually painful.

He blinked against the cold tile, and felt the rough scrape of tiny molecular imperfections in the surface.

 _This is new,_ he thought glumly. Pain was far less significant than the sudden vertigo. The connection between his grace and vessel should be strong. Even with dwindled grace, the consent was a moment of communion; power pushed into the connection between angel and vessel gave even the weakest, battle-worn soldier a fighting chance to survive grace depletion. 

He licked his (Dean's) lips, and struggled to his feet.

The binding magic swelled, spell-threads sparking to life around him as they tried to recognize their target. Dean was and wasn’t Dean. The magic recognized the dissonance, and was trying to understand _how_ he was not Dean and if, in fact, it was still in play.

Castiel watched in satisfaction as the spell erupted in a shower of sparks. They fell around him like blood-red petals, saturating the area with frustrated magical intent. 

_Good,_ Castiel thought. One problem solved. 

His neck twinged, and Cas groaned in annoyance. The body should be at rest, but adrenaline and the lingering effect of the Mark knotted up his muscles like a bad night’s rest in a restaurant booth. 

He pinched at his shoulder with a thin displeasure. (Leave it to a Winchester to be a pain in the neck.)

Startled, his hand dropped to his sides. That thought was not his own.

"--Dean?" he whispered: half-question, half-hope. 

Castiel swallowed. Marshalling his calm, he slid a tendril of grace free of his being. It ghosted across the corner in his mind that Dean had withdrawn into. 

\-- _Was his soul shying away from_ \-- No. It was stationery. At rest. At first, he felt nothing but _gray_ and _twilight_ and _in-between_. 

As his grace warmed the places it touched, a steady pulse returned. Dean’s soul slumbered, and deep contentment flowed back into Castiel. Dean. At peace. A minor miracle. If his grace lingered a few moments longer than strictly needed, Castiel couldn’t deny how tranquil it felt. 

The remaining sources for intrusive thoughts all at once became orders of magnitude less appealing. He had less than a minute to consider the possibilities (appalling, each one) when a light rap against the kitchen island with the butt of a gun stopped him cold. 

"Dean. I’m only going to ask you this once”--Castiel turned. Sam! He was gripping his Taurus like he meant to aim it at him, but didn’t know if it would do any good--“What the _hell_ did you do to Cas?"

* * *

It was safe in the gray twilight. He was here alone; he was sure of it.

Before--before what?--that would have scared him. But for too long he hadn’t been alone in his own mind, the Mark adding its own color commentary to everything he thought. Now he felt insulated from its petty jibes. 

There was no form here that he was used to. After a few minutes or centuries, Dean began to discriminate feelings, pictures, words, sounds. They came at him without context, and he gave them his best guess.

Hard surface under his fists. He was trying to push himself up, okay, that much felt certain. But his legs felt like jelly; one of them was fractured, he remembered the screaming pain as it broke. He needed to hold up. Dean tried to stop his upward movement, to rest a minute, but ended up sprawled on his face. 

Okay.

Moving bad.

The thud of a gun hitting tile, or marble, or something hard brought him ‘round. Sam! he felt his own complicated love spiral out of his chest. 

An echo returned to him: Sam!

Affection welled up in his chest, and it wasn’t his; it felt effervescent, lighter than air, with very little overlaid guilt. 

So maybe he wasn’t alone here. 

And maybe that was okay too.

* * *

Sam! A thrill ran through Castiel’s grace, like he hadn’t seen Sam in months. But he’d seen him just prior to him rushing the last occupant out of the house, and now he was back, gun tightly gripped in one hand, and an angel blade sized lump inside his other sleeve.

Sam stood a few feet off from him, his finger on the trigger of his gun, as he inclined his head toward the floor. 

“I don’t see wings, so you didn’t kill him. That’s something at least,” he muttered. “Dean. Care to explain?”

“I am not your brother,” Castiel answered immediately, like that was all that needed to be said, then reconsidered as he took in the state of the kitchen. 

Dust rained down in a steady drifts, the dank air of the kitchen heavy with violence. Blood spread out from him in half-crazed circles, blasted into a glassy-heat-fusion with the floor from the presence of his angelic form that Castiel hadn’t thought to control. The windows were blown out, light bulbs hopelessly melted into their sockets. His (Jimmy’s) body vacantly stared into space, breathing deeply but without purpose or other movement. The shifter’s body lay a few feet away. Broken magic--a tension that even humans could feel as _wrongness_ \--swirled around a subtle but unmistakable magic vortex. At the center, toward which the entire room seemed to be bending, was the binding coin. 

“I’m fine, Sam.” He mustered the most earnest smile he had learned how to make onto Dean’s face. Smiling was still a new thing for Castiel, and definitely a new thing in this body. He wasn’t sure if he’d executed it properly; Sam did not look reassured. “He’s fine, too.”

“Yeah, no, I got that, it’s just how did you--” Something seemed to click into place in Sam’s mind, because righteous anger drained from his face, and settled somewhere between astonished and extremely pissed. 

“We--all three of us--need to return to the Bunker immediately, I suspect that the Mark has--”

“Cas--ti-- _el_ ,” Sam dragged out each syllable like they formed a complete sentence. “Be straight with me,” Sam said. “Did you trick my brother?”

“No,” he said, brows knitting together. “I couldn’t, Sam. You know the rules of angelic--oh.”

Gadreel. A guilty pit opened in his stomach. He should have known. He should have done more. Silence fell in the kitchen. 

“Is this awkward?” Castiel said at last. A strange giddiness rose in his chest. He rubbed at it unconsciously. It felt like the right thing to do, so shrugged and he added: “At least I’m wearing pants.”

* * *

The gray receded again. Sam was in front of him, looking like Dean had hit his dog. He never liked that look of crushing disappointment--and he’d seen it far too often on his brother’s face. Usually because of something he had done. Context was lacking, but he didn’t need to know _why_ to know _what to do_. It was a goofy shrug, but it felt right, so he did it.

And he joked, because that felt right too.

It felt right to both of them.

Wait, what?

* * *

“Wow. Okay, Cas,” Sam’s finger eased off the trigger though he didn’t seem any less on edge. “Just--just don’t do _that_ again, and we’re cool.”

“Do what, Sam?”

“Channel Dean, or whatever you were just doin’. Don’t do that, okay?”

“Understood.” --Though Castiel really didn’t understand; he’d only been following his instincts, and that one had felt like a good one. 

Sam gestured Castiel’s current vessel, and then to his vacant one. “Are we done here? The family called the cops, and we need to get gone.” Sam hesitated. “Is he--asleep? Will he hear us?”

“He is--slumbering. What he hears or doesn’t hear, I’m not as familiar with that as you are.” 

Castiel marveled how plainly he could read Sam: Sam locked his jaw, and he knew that meant _end of that topic of conversation_. “Who’s going to carry Jimmy?” 

“Jimmy’s gone,” Cas said quietly. He’s been gone for a long time, he thought about adding, but didn’t.

Things turned awkward again, and Castiel palmed the back of his neck. They stared at each other from across the kitchen, Sam with his hand on the gun (debating whether to use it), and Castiel unmoved from the binding place.

Great. At least he wasn’t the only one fucking things up with his brother.

Wait. 

_Brother _?__

Castiel stared at Sam in shock. 

“Look man, if it’s that weird, I’ll take Jimmy--you,” Sam said. “And you take care of the coin. I’ve already handled that thing more than I should.” 

He nodded, distracted. This was--bleedthrough? His mind raced. 

He risked another tendril of Grace. It washed over the corner in Dean’s mind, where Dean’s soul still slumbered. He lingered next to it, drawing his grace slowly across for a full check. Dean’s soul _was_ asleep. 

The quiet intimacy of the touch surprised him. 

Castiel knew the gesture would be unbearably familiar if they were both in bodies. 

Without meaning to, Castiel remembered them pressed together as Dean had attempted to subdue (kill) him. He was going to give full consideration to that encounter, he was, but he needed to speak to Dean directly. After they returned to the safety of the Bunker. 

He pulled away.

Right now, he needed to get his panic under control. It was bubbling up through the crevices in his mind, and it was _counter-productive_. 

“The bunker, Cas. Let’s get going.”

* * *

Dean panicked. He wasn’t proud of it, but who would know?--aside from the other presence, or whatever. The other wasn’t the Mark; he wasn’t being held prisoner in his own mind. He could exert his will, move his body if he wanted, but he had no desire to do either. He knew that he was forgetting something _huge_. Someone that he trusted to protect him. 

_Treat it like a case_ , he thought. _Who, what, where, for how long, and who's already gotten dead._

_Let's start with the where. I am definitely in a where._ Where _am I?_

He felt around. He was comfortable in the gray twilight. He was lying down. The material beneath him felt plush but firm. A bed? No, it was as insubstantial as he was, and he felt himself fall through it as he searched for clues. He was completely calm. He was in a place where heights apparently held no fear for him.

_Heaven_ , he thought fiercely. 

Panic rose from outside of himself, and it brought Dean up short. Not dead; no memories of loved ones. Not Heaven; those assholes wouldn’t let him in on a bet. 

Like a bulb flicking on in a dark room, Dean was backlit in a strong white-blue light. He was not alone. The other stood outside of his sight line--and not for lack of trying, but Dean could not bring it into focus. The way it lingered just on the cusp of his space reminded him of a conversation he had while he months of accumulated crap off his bed in the bunker. This time the bed was empty, stripped down to its sheets. He sat on its edge, and he repeated the gesture as best he could: a _I’m making space for you, so you better sit the hell down next to me_ tug. 

He felt a slow press of a body beside him, and Dean felt... comfort. home. rest. 

He grabbed onto the feeling, and his body sank into it.

This was your life, Dean Winchester: insubstantial spooning with someone you couldn’t even remember. 

The other gently turned him onto his side. Dean felt a hand ghost over his jaw. He couldn’t help licking his lips. 

He _wanted_ this. 

He grabbed the other around the neck, and closed his eyes, so it had no excuse to skitter back into the gray twilight when he turned his face. He pressed it against his chest, so the length of their bodies could touch... and remembered a similar hold, tainted with violence, but undeniably _them_. 

He was breathing hard. The other cupped his chin, and tilted it up achingly slow. Dean Winchester was not a patient man, it was true, but when the other simply raked his eyes over him head-to-toe, Dean could not fucking wait. He tried to connect the kiss, and instead felt a moment of two live wires touching. Heat shot through him at lightning speed. It wasn’t what he expected, but it was _good_. 

He groaned. 

The other pulled away, and Dean panicked again. The panic was childish, and he knew it. He felt the other shush him, and he quieted. He wasn’t alone; he wasn’t abandoned. 

There was work to be done, he got that.

But maybe.

If he was lucky--when had Dean ever been lucky?--when the work was done, maybe he could hold onto this a little longer.

* * *

“We’re out of here in two,” Sam said. 

Sam hoisted Castiel’s unoccupied vessel in a fireman carry, and hobbled out of the kitchen under the added weight of the body. Castiel spotted the sink in the kitchen island (grab the coin and go). Something else tugged him. He could feel the drying crust of blood on his skin. 

Cleaning it with grace felt wrong, somehow. 

Castiel broke the plane of the binding spell and felt a tingle of magical residue along his legs. He ran the tap, and rinsed his hands and face until he saw the water running clear. He patted down his face with his hands, and let the water drip down his chin. 

He was annoyed when he couldn’t locate any towels, but then sheepishly gave in and wiped his face down with Dean’s outer shirt.

There was no use in delaying further. It was time to grab the coin and go.

His fingers brushed the surface, and his heart stuttered.

The spell threads that had quietly invaded every square inch of the floor raised themselves in fierce firelight. 

It was a trap.

* * *

In retrospect, Castiel realized that he didn’t know what the hell he was doing, touching a magical object that was unknown to him in any practical way. He had been handling his fair share suspicious trinkets on the road with Hannah, snapping photos of them, and helping Sam put together this Plan B. They had discarded a number of promising leads, in favor of the plan that Sam had built after a week of intensive searching in the Men of Letters Archive.

Sam had told him he had found peaceful magic, something that bound enemies until they could be delivered a message, then returned safely home. Castiel had been curious but hadn't pressed Sam for details when he refused to elaborate. He trusted Sam’s judgement. 

Yes, there had been something _off_ about the binding coin. Castiel hadn’t taken too close a look when he first laid eyes on it in the kitchen. As he touched it for a second time, he noticed the material was all wrong. Sumerian spellcraft didn’t use magical alloys. Certainly not a shimmery steel that only appeared tarnished, but up close, glowed with the same unyielding energy of an angel blade.

And as his mind searched the vast index of his pre-Apocalypse days, he recalled the coins were created during the days of the Sumerian gods’ internecine squabbles. In those days, the Host had been known as Messengers, not angels--nonviolent, nonpartisan, nonthreatening--and they had mediated for peace between the warring gods, keeping the uneasy balance of power between factions. The coins had been made on the cusp of war. His memory of their use was blank: no personal experience, or experience from the Host to draw on. For after their creation, it was only days later that the Host chose sides. In the resulting slaughter, no one who knew the magic remained. And no one who had seen the slaughter doubted that the Host had indeed staked their claim as warriors. _Messenger_ fell out of use, and they didn’t pretend to be anything but soldiers.

That history--now that he'd taken the time to remember it--should have given Castiel pause. 

He stared down at the coin. Only a millisecond had passed. He had slowed time as much as he could, and was hemorrhaging Grace. A voice as clear as a bell called out his true name in Enochian.

His blood ran cold.

What he had told Dean felt like truth at the time: a coin to bind God’s hands. And it still, was, literally true.

For what else were angels but the hands of God?

* * *

Dean was flung to the front of his mind. Something was very _wrong_. The gray retreated all at once, and Dean stared down at his hands, touching that goddamn coin. 

Sammy was gone, and so was Cas.

He was alone in the kitchen, painted with the blood he’d spilled.

He looked closely at the coin, and he knew several things about it immediately: one, it was a relic of a failed military strategy; two, it was meant to bind and kill Messengers, which, okay, really non-threatening name for the biggest supernatural douchebags he’d ever met; three, it was going to kill _him_ right now, if it had anything to say about it. 

Dean knew from experience, the more he struggled, the quicker he died.

If this was ever a time for prayin’, he knew it was now. He sent his mind out towards Cas: _Don't let me die. Please, Cas._ And he felt as though he heard an echo back of, _Never. Not while I have any say in the matter._

Dean could see where the spell threads--huh, that was new--rose out of the ground. They were seconds away from grappling onto his body. Once they had a hold of him, that was it, game over, _arrivederci asshole_. 

_Jump_ , Cas said.

 _How high_ , Dean retorted.

 _To me_ , Cas said. 

Dean felt power gather in his body--and okay, he was pushing the Mark for extra juice because he knew there was no surviving what came next--not as a human or anything else--and he leapt.

Dean was only mildly surprised when he saw his body fall away beneath him as he crossed the threshold into the ether’s outer dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes! I only have a few of them for this chapter. 
> 
> For fan ideas about what Castiel was up to in the years before angels were banished from walking openly among humanity, see seperis' [Paper](http://archiveofourown.org/works/405843), Zatnikatel's [A Distant Mirror](http://archiveofourown.org/works/732883), and probably a few chapters into this story!
> 
> Hannah hasn't shown up yet, and when she does, I promise it will be fun. Someone has to set the Winchesters straight about their _detailed yet incredibly risky save-themselves-and-maybe-the-world_ plans. I have a lot of feelings for her, and wished that she had been given a deeper arc than "having feelings for Cas."
> 
> If you are as excited about Sumerian coins (I'm pretty sure I'm the only one), let me just tell you, you will be in for a treat next chapter! Kidding. I promise: no new coins. Only the old coin, in continually new guises.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannah and Sam, in the aftermath of Chapter 3.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long hiatus, folks. The majority of this story was plotted out during the mid-season 10 hiatus in January 2015. Though the plot diverges from canon around S10 “Ask Jeeves,” it also diverges from show concepts/canon around “The Hunter Games.” Anything that happens/is revealed in the back half of S10 likely will not happen in this story (or happen in its own way). You have been warned!

For the tenth time that day, Hannah deeply regretted the entire concept of linear time. It had been fifteen minutes since Castiel disappeared--it felt far longer.

Their mission to collect rogue angels hadn’t been without its risks, and objectively she knew that distance did not automatically equal danger. However, she and Castiel had established separation protocols; if either of them should be out of contact with the other, the maximum amount of time that _required_ verbal check-in was thirty minutes (She had felt prayer was fine; Castiel had pressed a mobile phone into her hands he had purchased at the Mount Zion Gas-N-Sip). If thirty minutes passed with no contact, it meant any number of unpleasant outcomes. Abduction, incapacitation, imprisonment, compulsion, death. 

All of them entirely plausible with the Winchesters, she thought bitterly.

Hannah followed protocol. At the fifteen minute mark, the room was to be secured against incursion. 

She chalked in abjurations against tainted souls that did double duty against monsters and demons. 

The memory of Castiel’s face haunted her ( _Hannah, release me._ ). That _look_. She’d never experienced anything like it. She could only wonder what it felt like, to want something that completely. A faint longing trickled up from her (sleeping) vessel, and with a slash of blood, she completed an angelic binding key powerful enough to keep Lucifer himself at bay. 

Strong enough to hold against anything that might crawl out of the makeshift tunnel that had been created by the Calling.

Thirty minutes. 

Hannah cradled the cellular phone in her open palms. She sat down heavily on the harvest-colored rag-tied rug at the foot of the beds. 

Restlessness was counterproductive. Her options were to accept the situation for what it was (Castiel in mortal danger on the behalf of a Winchester), or to offer her former commander whatever help she could from three states away. Distance limited her options, but ‘ _holding the fort_ ’ was not in her nature. 

What was the state of her vessel? Healthy, ready for action. What tools did she have at her disposal? A Heaven that was only partially reopened to the souls in the Veil; a grace that thrummed in weak connection to the Host. She could neither pass through the ether in her vessel, nor could she return to Heaven for reinforcements except by physically visiting the Gate. 

She had her angel blade. She had her own two hands. She had faith. 

Castiel was not dead; of that she was certain.

* * *

Hannah prayed to Castiel. The prayer was soft, wordless. Hannah’s body unfolded as her trueform rose from its vessel, and sped in the wake of the prayer. Flight might have been lost to the angels, but she could still skim the world in this manner. 

The word flew across the thin eggshell of the mortal world, her prayer illuminating a surface full of faults, cracks, and irregular calcification that somehow made a protective whole. In the murky distance, she saw the bright smudge of another angel. (Castiel! Fading, though, he was fading again. His borrowed grace was burning out his body at a terrible speed). 

The cracks narrowed, and squeezed around her like a vice. 

Hannah felt her vessel’s teeth grit in frustration back in the motel room. 

Castiel was was slowing time. 

“I’m close!” she thought urgently. “Let me pass.”

She wasn’t close enough to see with his eyes, but she could feel a few sensations, filtered through a rough static. Smooth floor. The cold drip of sweat. The absolute certainty that dying wasn’t the worst thing, not by a long shot. Hemorrhaging grace. A millisecond held before a terrible choice. 

Scraping together the power around her, she screamed. “Castiel!”

His grace jerked towards her, like he had been startled from his thoughts. She felt him joke bitterly, but did not understand the meaning of his words. Then the world erupted, time resumed, and Castiel was no longer in his body.

Hannah slumped against the nearest bed. 

Confusion bit into her. It had felt like Castiel had taken another vessel. Was he so injured that he had to find another body? Was that even possible, with the tattered shreds of two other angels tying his mortal body to the Heavenly Host? Could another vessel even sustain him? 

But if he had taken another vessel, she shouldn’t have lost the connection of prayer. Hannah had questions, and nothing in the way of answers. It was astonishing just how little infinite knowledge seemed to count when a Winchester was involved. 

Hannah dismissed the thought the moment after she had it, but the knowledge persisted. At some point, she had stopped thinking of him as _Castiel of Heaven_ , and had replaced him with Castiel Winchester instead.

* * *

_We’re out of here in two_ , Sam had said, and he damn well meant it. Night had set in, and the track lighting outside of the estate had flipped on. The day had thrown him enough curveballs, and he was damn well ready to pack it in and head back to the bunker. In this case, _it_ was one currently unoccupied vessel of Castiel, formerly of Heaven, recently of the Lincoln, currently slow-breathing in the back seat of the Impala. 

Sam pushed Cas’ heels into the car, gently tucking his legs against the leather. He distracted himself from the insanity of what waited for him back in the house (Dean and Cas, sharing a body. His brother. His friend. CasDean?), by taking a rough set of vitals from the unconscious body in front of him. Pulse steady. A puff of air at least one every two minutes. At least autonomic function still worked. 

He scrubbed a hand over his face. 

But the upside, because today needed one hell of an upside, was that Cas could take Dean back home without spells, magical handcuffs, or any of the highly questionable trinkets Sam had stuffed into the trunk as a back-up to this already pretty fucked up back-up plan. With Cas steering, Sam could make the three day drive to the bunker, lock Dean down in the dungeon, get Cas sorted back into his own body, and get this fixed.

Sam was confident that all he needed was time. He had to be. He could feel the lid trying to come off the “Shit To Deal With Later” box, the crest of a deep welling despair that he hid inside of it, and he couldn’t. Not right now. 

He backed out of the Impala gingerly, but he was still at an odd angle, and shoulder-checked the driver’s seat. Sam swore, and rubbed at his arm. Hairs prickled on the nape of his neck. It was a very casual puff of warm air, like someone had laughed against his skin. He caught a glimpse of the prop amulet hanging from the rearview mirror, the wooden face gently glowing in the--All at once, Sam hyperfocused, his eyes snapping across the objects in the car through the windshield. He saw light spill through the windows of foyer, light without much heat. The light swallowed the house, then died into the humid warmth of the night air.

Sam groped for his gun. A tremor ran up his arm, that same tremor that had wrecked his aim behind the kitchen island. Because he knew. He just _knew_. 

* * *

Forty-five minutes. Hannah threw her senses wide. She was officially on a ‘search and rescue’ mission. The airquotes were visible in her own mind, as she could not quite settle in with the hunter mindset. 

Castiel’s last known location was a house in New Canaan, Connecticut. Hannah hadn’t sensed the Winchesters. She knew all about that: angelic warding carved onto their ribs years ago during the first Civil War. It was a story Castiel actually liked to tell, when she could get him to loosen up about his first resurrection. But even though she knew it as fact, their complete absence from the house opened a pit in her stomach that she was not expecting.

Hannah regulated her breathing, and readied herself for a second attempt at prayerwalking.

* * *

Sam approached the kitchen doorway, gun drawn, shoulders streamlined to present a narrow target. He scanned the area for threats. The house looked empty (and minus the hunters, was by his last sweep ten minutes ago), but he hedged his bets and quashed his desire to call out. He had to listen to instinct; in their line of business, you could never count on an empty house to remain empty for very long. 

* * *

The room appeared spacious by human standards, maybe something that they would call an _estate_. High ceilings, comparatively large rooms, blood splashed across the floor. The energy of the house had been tainted by the brood of Purgatory; perhaps as recently as an hour ago, or less. Hannah knew she was not as familiar with the specific lines of purgatory as she should be, and especially not at a distance. 

A vampire, maybe a shapeshifter? she guessed. 

She struck against a strong magical bubble in the center of the kitchen, a blister on the surface of the world. Power that had sprung up around Castiel’s last location. 

The center of the room was void, neither energy nor light. The magic was old. Human timescale old, with traces of celestial intent. Hannah pushed at it, shifting the threads of magic aside, just to glimpse through-- 

The world tilted sickeningly on its side. 

A great hand reached out to her, and she was thrown from room. 

* * *

Sam flattened himself against the wall. The moulding dug into his knees. A presence blew past him with the force of a straight-line gale, and he fought to stay in contact with the wall. He clung to it with a rough handhold. Tables, chairs, chintzy enamel figurines were dragged in its wake. All of the glass in the house sang out, ringing like a bell and increasing in pitch. Sam threw an arm across his shoulder, and braced his forehead against his elbow. 

A great toll of silence followed, rolling over the the corners of the house and sinking into his skin. He couldn’t even hear his own heartbeat. 

Sam lifted his head, and after a beat, and another, slid back into a hunter's stance. His heart was in his throat. The entire house felt _wrong_ ; the door to the kitchen practically screamed it. He scanned the hallway for hazards, but it was empty of any surface, scrap of wood, debris. As though everything that had been pulled simply no longer existed. 

His Taurus was gone. 

Unarmed. Outclassed.

Sam could feel the involuntary tremble in his legs, and he rebuked himself harshly. What would he normally do in this situation? Dean would mutter about magical bullshit, and how wasn’t this just their luck; they’d lock and load, and kick down the goddamn door. That was what being a Winchester meant: kicking in doors to all of the nasty places of the world. 

The thought grounded him. (For he had the feeling that aside from providing him with a feeling of safety, guns weren’t exactly the tool for this situation.) 

He shouldered his way into the kitchen through the side-door. Nothing had broken; all of the windows were intact; the room just as he remembered leaving it. But in the stillness after a storm, Sam was very aware of one thing.

Dean and Cas were nowhere to be found.

* * *

With a thunderclap, Hannah fell back into her vessel. She came up from the ground gasping. Her grace was on fire, raw from all of the places the magic had cut into her. Her vessel felt the shock, and split open a few veins in a rousing approximation of just how shitty she currently felt. She spit out a mouthful of saliva and blood, and held her side. 

What _was_ that magic? 

Hannah slowed her breathing, and willed herself to focus through the pain.

She sat back on her heels as her flesh re-knit itself. In the background, she heard the whine of an A/C kick off with a sluggish cough in the background.

There was no way around it now. She was going to have to contact Heaven. 

“Fuck,” she muttered in the disapproving stillness of the room. 

* * *

Sam was not panicking. He cleared the kitchen, then methodically swept all the house for signs of Cas. In one of the security rooms, he’d come across an unloaded Webley Mark IV, and snatched it up. At the very least, he could use it if a human threat entered the house. Sam knew better: the gun was a means to an end, and that end was _feeling prepared for something, anything._

He drifted back down to the kitchen. If this wasn’t a rescue, a hunt, or a triage, then it was a case. Cas and Dean were missing. Not Dead. Dead was only what you became when every other option was exhausted. So. Sure. He didn’t need to panic (even though his support circle was down to maybe two rings, Sheriff Mills and Garth), but he did need to work the scene. 

Sam’s eyes skittered across the floor, and pieced together the night’s events in his mind. He tapped the beats into his leg as he walked the crime scene. Shapeshifter. Sam behind the kitchen island. Dean with the gun. Dean firing the gun. Dean pulling out the knife. Dean stabbing the hell out of the Shapeshifter. Shapeshifter dead; Dean in bad shape. Dean staring down at the knife in his hands, as though he were seeing himself through a haze. _I thought I let it go, Sammy._

The spell. The Calling. Cas. 

On the Cas beat, Sam’s toe scuffed against the coin, and he felt a small jolt run through his leg like it had fallen asleep, and had caught up with the rest of the class-- 

The coin. 

Sam pocketed it, and rubbed his finger over its edge. A sense of relief flooded through him. _Everything was going to be alright,_ said a voice that Sam didn’t recognize. _Let’s find Hannah and work everything out._

Sam dialled the number before he remembered that he knew it.

“Hannah? It’s me, Sam. Yeah, got it in one. Look, let’s regroup. No, I can come to you. Is your location secured? Good. Stay put. I’ll be there in--how far away are you?

“Great.

“I’ll see you in a few hours.”

Sam slide the phone back into his pocket. He felt good. No, great. He had a plan: he was going to see Hannah, and he was going to give her the coin, and everything would work out _great._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So museaway is going to be running a Work in Progress writing event, and I will be finishing up this fic under the auspices of that event! So dear readers, I will be finishing this fic this year. Hooray! Chapter 5 is currently in progress.
> 
> *confetti*


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